


White Noise

by ActualBampot



Category: RWBY
Genre: Canon Divergence, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Isolation, Memory Loss, Psychological Warfare, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2019-08-23 08:09:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16615169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ActualBampot/pseuds/ActualBampot
Summary: Ruby Rose remembers her name, that for a time she attended Beacon Academy, and that she one day hoped to become a huntress. But as disjointed memories begin to surface and she grows to fear those she doesn't understand, Ruby turns to the arms of the only woman that has vowed to keep her safe.





	1. Chapter 1

_"I want you to come with me when the time is right."_

Ruby remembered the unexpected statement trapping a choked breath in her throat at the time. Cinder must have detected the anxiety welling up behind her eyes when she tutted softly, and her slight smile did nothing to quell the tightness in Ruby's chest. 

_"These events can be rather drab. Political talks, sugar-coated formalities. Certainly not things that would hold my attention.."_

The promise felt like such a long time ago. She barely remembered cool fingertips and diamond-edged nails tracing a gentle pattern along her jaw, only that as she keened into the touch it buried her anxiety in moments.

After spending so long alone in cold static, Ruby had quickly succumbed to fearing the prospect of loneliness. Soft and possessive contact would often become stale when left far enough between, and Ruby would almost forget how easily Cinder's touch could ignite fire in the pit of her stomach. 

She lay unmoving on her back, unpolished, dull silver directed at a black roof that seemed endlessly abyssal.

Their room was windowless, dimly cast in rich burgundy with wooden furnishings lightly scattered around the room, grains stained a deep ebony. Ruby fought not to feel as though the walls were slowly closing in day by day, that the dull lamps at their bedside were not casting menacing shadows of ill intent.

There was a hollow was forming in her chest and no matter how much she slept, or how many novels from Cinder's expansive collection she read (often more than once) the void could only truly be filled with dark vermilion whispers as sweet and bitter as wine. 

The mornings that followed were ones she used to fear the most. Waking alone to a cold, empty room would rock a coarse shock through her system, enough that when Cinder would return she would find the girl pressed into a corner, ragged nails gripping herself hard enough to bleed with clothes soaked through in a cold sweat. 

Cinder had encouraged her quiet confession, and it elicited an immediate change in the woman’s morning routine. Rather than her silent departures in the early hours, Ruby was instead drawn from sleep by gentle words stirring smoothly against the shell of her ear. Yet the bliss of comfort would go cold as quick as it'd came. 

As it was with each fleeting moment between them. 

Even after finally granting Ruby’s quiet requests to come with her as she tended to various points business around the complex, it was in silent tow. Ruby would still swoon for the stolen glances between them that only became obtainable when Cinder's attention briefly wavered; The woman would look down at her with a gaze burning as hot as molten amber, roaming her, inspecting her silently and possessively until she snapped back to whichever matter was at hand. And just like that, the flame stoked from cavernous emptiness inside Ruby was extinguished immediately. 

It was agonizing, and as the length of time between those moments stretched the limits of Ruby’s memory she found herself remembering only how Cinder would seem disinterested, or simply disregarded her presence entirely, and it hurt.

Every effort to catch even a minute thread of the older woman's attention had manifest into a heavy well of unmet anticipation in Ruby's chest until even the briefest contact Cinder had with others would sting. 

She tried to seem unaffected, quiet and compliant, just how she knew Cinder liked, but after countless weeks of touring the building with the woman, and silent nights of sharing a bed at arms length she continued to suffer restlessly, comforted only by the slow rise and fall of her breath warm and tempting against her face.

Ruby would dare herself to steal a chaste kiss in the dead of the night but never follow through, anxiously settling for the airy brush of their hands or legs. She knew the bounds of Cinder’s fury, yet she continued to teeter dangerously close to the drawn line, yearning until nothing could sate her. 

Ruby sat up to rub her eyes when they began to sting, weary gaze drifting to the books she had abandoned on the bedside stand. They were re-reads, and the first ones she’d sought out after Cinder had praised them as her favorites in passing. One told the story of a woman’s sad life trapped beneath a bell jar, and the other painted a picture of a world very different to the one she knew. One without Grimm, but ravaged by war and the suppression of individualism.

Ruby slotted the book numbered simply as 1-9-8-4 back among a slew of Dust practices and magic theory in bindings that looked ages old. As much as Ruby read, the truth was she had trouble understanding any of them.

But the first halves of Cinder’s favorites always timed the hours impeccably. She would be back soon. 

Ruby hastily fixed her shirt when taking a seat on the edge of their bed. And she waited.. until fleeting minutes began to drag. She tried not to look at the door, fidgeting with the worn cuffs of her white blouse and hair nervously.  
250 pages were always enough, sometimes even overshooting, but the minutes quickly began to folder over until hours passed, and panic rose in Ruby’s throat like bile.

The door had always been locked- to keep her safe- but when it was finally thrown open with crashing force she saw Cinder enter in a blur, accompanied by none of the grace and poise Ruby knew her for. The girl watched dumb struck and silent as the woman slammed the door shut in the face of protesting voices trying to follow her. 

Ruby's usual flicker of excitement was far gone, anxiety instead tightening around her chest like a belt when Cinder didn't move from the door. The woman's palms remained pressed to wood long after muffled voices on the other side had drifted away in defeat. The feeling that something was awfully wrong plagued the young Rose until her eyes were able to fully focus past the dim glow of the bedside lamp.

It was one of the rare times the younger girl had seen the molten glow of Cinder's dust-infused clothes alight with fire, typically when she had been casting flames but... This glow was different, persistent, yet inconsistent along the swirling runes. What she noticed more than anything was how the older woman trembled all over, painted nails raking against the door with her head bowed between her shoulders. Her ash-tipped midnight hair had tumbled over both shoulders, obscuring her face like a curtain. 

"Ruby. Are you here?"

Her voice broke on the last word, shattering all preconceived expectations Ruby had created for Cinder. The girl rose from the bed, bare feet meeting the cold wooden floor. 

"Yes..?" Ruby’s confused reply came out as a breathy exhale she had been holding for too long. She stood at an unsure distance from Cinder who, in the time Ruby had crossed the room, hadn't moved. "Of course.. Are you-"

The brace Cinder held immediately gave way under Ruby's voice and she keeled into the door, legs barely left holding her weight.  
The younger girl squeaked in shock at the harsh-sounding thump, and eyes usually so dim and drained lit up like starlight. She hesitated for a long while, Cinder's name uttering past her lips in question but was met with a silence filled only with the woman's sharp uneven breathing.

The girl willed another step forward, hand trembling as she reached for the red of Cinder's satin-clad arm- before a dry hiss sounded.  
The immediate heat Ruby felt at first contact was bearable, but within seconds she felt her palm scream and she wrenched away with a small yelp. At the same time Cinder convulsed to life with a guttural growl of pain.

Ruby's eyes widened in horror. The runes on her clothes. The hot glow. Cinder wasn't controlling them. The smell was the last thing to invade Ruby's senses, something thick and unpleasant like a smog gagging at the back of her throat. 

Burning flesh.

"Oh no, no no." 

The young girl tried her best to maneuver around the runes and hoist the alarmingly heavy woman to her feet. She turned her, hips pressing back against the door as the smaller girl struggled to keep her upright. Every movement seemed to inflict agony, and the only safe place Ruby could find purchase was around her waist. 

Cinder found her footing, hands weighing heavily down on Ruby's small shoulders for support- Her palms were almost as hot as the runes she'd touched, feeling them heat her skin even through her thick cotton blouse.

Ruby’s heart was pounding like a jackhammer. Cinder was in pain, but as much as she tried the girl couldn't seem to break away from the realization that this was Cinder she was touching- and holding- and supporting.  
The thought alone was enough to break her blood out in a wildfire hotter than anything the older woman could inflict upon her right now. She had called out for her. She needed her.

Gulping past a dry throat, Ruby's gaze rose and flickered along Cinders collar. The runes were there too, glowing bright and burning intensely. 

"...R-Ruby.."

She dared to look higher at the whimper of her name, how could she have forgotten? Those rare times when Cinder would regard her with quiet adoration in that molten amber gaze that glowed hotly when she focused on her.

The Glow.

Ruby's brow creased as she held in an anxious breath, trembling fingers moving from Cinder's waist to cautiously reach for her jaw. Had Ruby still owned Crescent Rose the pads of her fingers surely would have calloused and felt unpleasant to the touch. However, misuse had softened them like silk, and almost immediately Ruby could hear some calm returning to Cinder's breathing. 

She lifted Cinder's chin from the bow into her collar, a painfully held breath hitching like a stab to the chest. The same eyes that made her feel dizzy and clouded were almost unrecognizable, swallowed beneath angry blotched skin, as raw as bare flesh. Ruby's bottom lip quivered as she gingerly angled Cinder's face further into the light. More burns bloomed across the right side of her jaw. They stretched, gradually darkening towards her ear where the dust shard that she wore as jewelry from her lobe burned white hot. 

"Cinder..You're hurt." Her voice relented to a whisper, and painfully so. Cinder's eyes slowly crackled open to small slits and Ruby almost had to look away: There was so much light, like a furnace raging behind protective glass. The light was warm on Ruby's face, burning like miniature suns around a pupil of coal until Cinder snapped them shut to breathe out a shallow noise of pain. 

"Cinder!"

The door behind them rattled violently, making Ruby almost jump from her skin. The urgent voice on the other side was muffled, but was clearly recognizable as belonging to Emerald. The door continued to receive an assault hard enough that anyone else might have thought it was ready to come off its hinges. Ruby knew better. 

"I get it, you wanna keep up the 'alluring queen of evil' image intact" Another voice, male this time with a tone lined thickly in mock. Torchwick.

"But don't you think this is a little too serious to ignore? I mean.." A hollow laugh rang out, and distant memories made Ruby shudder at the sound. "You just had your butt whooped by three kids! You'll need something for that burn-OW" 

That had been the inevitable sound of Emerald punching the man, and somewhere painful judging by his short muffled whimpers. 

"You think this is a joke you orange-haired piece of snot? This is your fault! You knew they ran into trouble- you could have done something! You could have sent Neo!"

"Sometimes you forget i'm not a mind reader kiddo. Your queen bee makes it pretty clear at every waking moment that she 'has it all under control'" Ruby could practically hear his fingers raising in quotation marks. "Maybe if the three of you had actually done your jobs back at Beacon and wiped those rats out-"

"Ruby"

The girl snapped away from the bickering voices, zoning in on the sound of her name rolling from Cinder's tongue somewhat more controlled than before. A raw red hand trembled as it lifted from her shoulder, the soft pad of a single finger turning her chin and completely claiming her attention. In the distance the argument was elevating, causing the woman's next words to come out as a low hiss.

"Get rid of them"

Something weighty and cold clinked in Ruby's hands before Cinder stepped away, unsteadily cradling herself to the vanity mirror where she spent her mornings.

Ruby felt an odd sense of displacement. The Cinder that would spend the early hours of each day grooming herself as if it were a practiced art was not the Cinder the girl could see before her. Not the one regarding her wounds in her reflection with feigned annoyance as if they were but a light scuff. She could see the older woman's eyes betraying her behind their molten burn. Worry? Concern?

Ruby broke her stare when Cinder shot a narrow glance in her direction. Pools of wide silver lowered to the item passed feverishly into her hand. Keys, inked in smokey translucency, almost like glass. 

"...Ok." Her reply came slowly, and Ruby turned to move one of two seemingly identical keys to the door with an oddly quivering hand.  
The key slotted into the lock and she sucked in an anxious breath, pulling the heavy, heavy oak open part way.

"Cinder!" 

Emerald’s voice, full of anticipation wasn't reflective of her sour expression upon seeing the young girl peek out between the gap instead. "You. Where is she?"

"Why hello Red!" Ruby visually tensed when her gaze flicked to Roman Torchwick. His smug condescending smile still remained a nightmarish memory for the young girl, one only matched by the lashes and marks sunk into her back and shoulders. The reminder was physical, permanent. "Is your mother home?- oh" His wiry smile contorted. "Never mind." 

Something about his words sunk deep, but she wasn’t given the chance to contemplate why before the open collar of her simple cotton shirt was yanked by a coffee toned hand. She was pulled from the doorway, forced to look up at Emeralds distasteful snarl. 

"You little rat. If you don't tell me-"

"She's hurt." Ruby managed to choke out. There was a tremble creeping up at the back of her throat and threatening her words to waver. The girl tried to swallow it back and avoid the crimson eyes boring down on her, as if ready to pick her apart for everything she was worth. She could feel Emeralds fist tremble around her collar, but Ruby chanced another croak, anything to try and make Emerald understand. "She needs to rest-"

"She needs medical attention!" 

Emeralds seething expression suddenly dropped, as if a thought had sparked something else. Realization. Ruby hadn’t had a moment to protest when she was bodily dragged, and slammed back into the wooden door with enough force that the wind tore from her lungs, fear breaking out along her eyes. 

"This is your fault! Those stupid kids were YOUR teammates. You had something to do with this!"

"I don-"

_Smack_

Ruby's stunned eyes were downcast, moistening at the throbbing sting she felt on her face. 

But something else had stopped her breathing, an ill darkness that felt like a vice slowly constricting around her chest. Heart to palpitate against the pressure as if just to keep beating. She could hear Emeralds voice screaming and shouting in the distance- but she couldn't discern the words, as if listening from beneath the surface of murky water. Oh no.

She was brought up. Dazed, distant eyes met deep, crimson pools brimming with pure, unadulterated jealousy and-

_SMACK_

The second slap reminded Ruby that she wasn't breathing, couldn't. The sharp sting knocked a trapped cry from her throat that brought everything back into focus like a car crash. Emerald’s screeching as she spat words like venom was enough to make the younger girls' ears rattle and forehead throb. 

Torchwick was somewhere in the background, howling in laughter and Ruby trembled violently in white shock, lungs gasping and starved for air, sure that her chest would break with the sheer force of her heart slamming against her ribs. She had to move, she had to get away, had to go back. 

The distressed girl barely registered a blow of heat washing over her back, however the sudden shift in Emeralds expression told the story.  
Without warning Ruby felt the absence of wood against her back before being bodily pulled backward by a glowing arm that ensnared her shoulders and torso like a clamp.

She was turned, faced with someone's simmering and damp skin pressing soothingly against her stinging face. A reassuring heat enveloped Ruby in ways she couldn't describe, but certainly knew where she had felt before.

She felt pressure claiming the back of her head, drawing her in until the fragile girl saw color draining back into her blank trance and finally-  
she could breathe, hysterically, swallowing air back down fast enough for a sob to break past her throat.

Moments passed, and the air was frozen into stunned silence above the small whimpers heard emanating from Cinders arms. 

Even Roman had nothing to say, tongue seemingly trapped back in his neck at the sight of an imminent explosion stirring in the woman's burning glare. Cinder’s teeth and jaws were clenched tightly enough that Ruby felt the tremble of rage threatening to burn more than just the complex into ash and ruin. 

A noise dared whine past Emeralds throat, an apology, a plead, no one would know. Cinders low voice cut the girl off, cracked and uncontrolled. 

"..You petty, jealous, _useless child_."

Steam seeped from between Cinder's lips like smoke, billowing thickly into the air. The girl across from her fell away a few paces, chest rising and falling rapidly.

"..You dare to undermine me, to undo my efforts."

"-Ma'am, I just think-"

"You are not here to _think_."

She regarded both of them, and neither would dare to look up at her. Another moments silence passed and the pain lancing across Cinder's body was quickly pushed to the forefront of her attention, steam continuing to pour from between her lips. 

The woman's mouth quirked, trying to conceal any evidence of pain in front of her subordinates but the tense, frustrated expression Emerald wore told her she may have been clinging to her little rose for stability as much as she clung back.

"Get out of my sight. Both of you." 

The words were but an utter and thankfully seemed to carry the same weight when both Emerald and Torchwick moved away without another word, the man hastily reaching for a cigar to light as he did. 

"Unbelievable."

###### 

Cinder was a woman of very little tolerance and commanded absolute obedience. Ruby was reminded of watching in silence as Cinder tended to her business operations and how her mere presence gave off an allure that the Faunus of the White Fang seemed to detect within moments of her entering a room.

They would hastily make efforts to stay both out of her path and out of her reach were that possible, as a visit from Cinder Fall could only mean a reprimand more harsh than anyone would willingly endure. 

Her anger was a controlled simmer and was never carried far with words since she preferred more direct means of making her dissatisfaction clear. It wasn’t uncommon to see Faunus in the building sporting punishing burns, or to have simply vanished from their posts.

Ruby tensed at the memory, and tried to convince herself that what was unfolding here was different but- the woman was frustrated, angry and in pain and these things combined with none of the self-assured control Ruby knew her for was utterly terrifying. 

The girl sat silently on the bed back where she had begun, sweaty palms buried in her lap. Cinder's back was to her, arms lent heavily in front of her vanity mirror during a short moment of stillness. The liquid gold decorating the dress down slender curve of her back burned angrily. 

Ruby tensed again, and for the fourth time in a row watched the woman straighten unsteadily, casting her semblance outward- it was something she had seen her do only a few times before when dispelling whichever dust-infused clothing she had been armed with at the time. 

Runes not different to the ones on her dress encircled her again in arcs- and reached the same point as before where they appeared to flicker like the wick of a dying candle before breaking apart with a low drone.

With Ruby's anxiety already riding dangerous heights she almost jumped from her skin when at the peak of a guttural snarl Cinders fist collided with the table. Ruby swallowed hard, watching as the woman's tense body seemed to loosen flat in defeat, head dipped low between her shoulders and obscuring her face from the reflection of the mirror. 

"..My aura can't...can't take much more"

Though the burning light behind her eyelids had somewhat dimmed, the dust runes etched into her clothing continued to burn with a glow that seemed to grow more angry-looking the more she tried to dispel the clothing.  
Ruby watched on as her body expelled more steam, encircling the woman in a thick smog almost as if a muffled fire were burning her from the inside out. Her glowing gaze tilted over one shoulder to regard the girl sitting beyond the haze.

"Come here.."

There was a moment's hesitation, a flicker of fear but Ruby obeyed wordlessly, almost thankful that her tremble was entirely missed by a Cinder too engrossed in pain to notice. The woman blindly gestured down to a drawer beneath the mirror by Ruby's legs, and following the suggestion, she opened it to find dozens of compartments inside, painstakingly organized with various items... Needles and pins that were a transparent crystalline, spools of thread that on second glance appeared to dimly glow in various colors. 

"The scissors.." Cinder directed her.

For a second time Ruby's brow knotted as she pulled said item from the drawer, and silver pools had to re-adjust in the dim light to look at the scissors, realizing that blades were almost transparent, just like the needles. They caught the sunset tones of the bedside lamp and dazzlingly reflected the light in jagged shapes. 

"...Are made of tempered Dust crystals. The same kind used in weapon forging. They are the only thing capable of cutting raw dust." 

Ruby pursed her lips and nervously attempted to pass them to the woman, but they were pushed back to her by a shaking and hot hand. Ruby stared up at Cinder when she slowly twisted away from the mirror to meet face to face, and for the first time Ruby could see the exhaustion plaguing her expression, as if she would pass out at a moments notice. 

"I can't dispel this" Cinder referred down to herself, dark and sultry tones had become gravelly, eroded by agony searing into her skin. "If nothing is done...the ingrained dust will fuse to my body and continue to burn when it has drained my Aura."

"C-Cinder I don't.." A heavy grip fell on Ruby's shoulders for support once more, and the young girls' breathing quickening when Cinder groaned and hissed against her already hot cheeks. Ruby’s head shook disbelievingly 

"..I can't."

"You MUST." 

Pointed fingernails caused Ruby to wince, almost buckling as the older woman's grip clawed its way over her shoulders and down into her shoulder blades to desperately lessen space between them.  
For a brief moment the hot grip reached down to guide a soft, trembling hand up towards her chest, the tips of he scissors grazing silken red fabric and unraveling a few threads. The girl held her breath, distantly recalling a time where she would have wished for nothing more than to align these sharp scissors with Cinder's heart and push down with all her might-

Ruby buried the memory immediately.

"C-cut here..t-to stop the dust circulating" 

The woman guided a clammy hand to level the blades with the center of the runes painted on her chest, just beneath the pale expanse of exposed skin. Ruby's hand was now free and carrying the weight of the implement on her own. Her fingers parted and the shears opened around the fabric. 

"Will this hurt..?" Her voice fell to a whisper that tickled against the ear aligned with her lips. The intoxicating scent of sweet shampoo and smoke trapped in the woman’s soft, dark waves was perhaps the only thing stopping her heart from hammering her rib cage into splinters.  
Ruby inhaled slowly to steady herself as Cinder's forehead leaned close to meet her small shoulder, body overshadowing the girls height and muscles rigid and taught as if bracing herself. 

Cinder’s response was a sharp nod, unable to trust that the only noise passing her lips would be words. Unseen by Ruby, the woman’s canines raked across her bottom lip in attempts to keep the sounds inside her throat contained. 

She could do this, Ruby told herself. She could do it for her. Not unlike the way Cinder had held her after being struck by Emerald the girl threaded her fingers soothingly into soft dark locks for the very first time, unable to help relishing the feeling of pressing Cinder further into the crook of her neck and- 

-It snagged. Ruby tried again, harder, and attempted to quell the resurfacing panic when she felt Cinder's jaws part around her shoulder in a soundless scream. 

Ruby jammed the lines of dust into the back most part of the shears where they would be the sharpest, and the crude sound of metal scraping metal was superseded by the inhuman sound vibrating against the side of her neck. Teeth found her pulse, clamping down hard enough to spring tears to the girls eyes, but knowing this wasn't the end she snapped the shears shut. When the dust finally snapped with a resounding CRACK, she pressed her eyes together tightly and tensed, bracing. 

If the scream from before had been restrained Ruby might have believed the worst of the pain had passed, but now she was being pressed, nearly crushed between jaw and limb and the heat was unbearable. 

"C-Cinder St-"

Ruby was trying to be still, to let her ride it out, but she couldn't bear the intense heat for even a few more seconds. The grip Cinder held was tight and relentless, and vibrations of her voice screaming behind her teeth made tears pour down Ruby's flushed cheeks. She was writhing in panic and trying not to think of how the tempered scissors were still heavy in her grasp, trapped between their bodies and brushing the nape of Cinder's collar.  
She could just push up, it's all it would take, and let the dust crystals sink past the black band adorned around the woman’s throat. Then she could..she could..

And then what?

Suddenly the grip around her released, the temperature dropped to something resembling normal. The room fell frighteningly quiet, and Cinder wordlessly slipped from Ruby's grip as if liquid silk were escaping through her fingertips. 

The younger girl did nothing to catch her.

She fell unceremoniously at Ruby's feet, not even the noise of her body hitting the hardwood was enough to break the girls transfixed stare on wall across from them. She couldn't feel Cinder's burning hands on her skin anymore, nor the blood trickling from her neck down to her collar. The younger girl dropped Cinder's tempered shears, clean and untainted, and sobbed into her hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God I wrote the bulk of this chapter over 3 years ago :') 
> 
> Be gentle. This is my first time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Truth and reality are not always two in the same.

“Do you want to kill me?”

“N-no! No, never.” 

There was no pretense to Cinder’s question, nor to the way she seemed to tower as Ruby shrunk into herself, eyes stretched wide, confused. “I promise” It came out hoarser than intended but she meant it just as so, desperate for Cinder to understand but the expression bearing down on her gave nothing in response to her plea. 

With the clink of glass on stone unnaturally loud in her head Ruby’s instincts had her feet moving back as the woman advanced, reaching.

“Have I not given you all in my possession? My protection? My bed? My LOVE?”

Ruby remembered such a word, uttered with endearment and care and sometimes even fierce righteousness, but Cinder’s tongue coiled around it as if the word itself were acid to be spat down at the trembling girl. In her retreat she couldn’t tell what had caused her misstep, only that the woman that raged in flames was upon her, over her the moment she had fallen to the ground, and reaching, she held the point of a blade in line with her own heart-

“-yet I suppose I can be a bit...difficult.”

The girl’s silver eyes shone like coins, and yet not nearly as polished as the razors edge she followed from Cinder’s fingertips down to her own hand where the handle of a rapier was settled firm in her clammy grip. She couldn’t breathe… the intricate carvings dressing the barrel and cross guard written like a forgotten language on the insides on her eyelids.

“But if we’re going to do this..”

If her hand had been shaking around the blades’ handle it certainly didn’t show as the woman above dipped to blanket her in fire, guiding the tip to sink into flesh that had no give, did not bleed. 

“Cinder- No Cinder, please why are you-”

“..then we are going to have to do this together.”

And the chime to her voice wasn’t one Ruby had ever heard uttered past dark lips, only given a moment to realize it rung familiarity elsewhere as hands took her wrist- too many to have only been theirs, pushing the rapier up to exit through the woman above her as she _screamed_.

###### 

 

Pushed, dropped and held down into concrete had been a softer cushion in comparison to the way Ruby’s insides lurched when she woke. The room span, drowsy eyelids making it hard to focus on anything beyond the dull amber light struggling against the darkness of the room. Instead she closed them, turning down into the cradling warmth of her pillow, distant remains of spice and ash heavy beneath her nose like a vivid memory. 

She was in bed. In their bed on the side closest to the door, _the wrong side_. Ruby suddenly tensed and instinctively moved to the side next to the wall when she..slowed after lifting from Cinder’s pillow.

She couldn’t feel gentle strokes feathering her hair or the press of nails raking soothingly over her scalp, and entirely absent was the familiar whisper of honeyed words cooing her from sleep. There was only an unpleasant ache occupying the breadth of her shoulder, that when blindly reaching she found was dressed in a bandage and tender to the touch.  


For long moment Ruby stared emptily at the wall above their bed, the gears of broken clockwork in feeble rotation before realization snapped viciously into place. Instantly she was up, untangling herself from the sheets. The girl tore around to peer into near darkness, wide, flat eyes glazed with a tinge of fear, and her voice only barely broke the draining silence. 

“..C...Cinder?” 

She was immediately drawn to a chair that sat before the largely unused hearth decorating the wall opposite their bed. Everything in the room had its place, and it did not belong there. 

The girl eased from their bed, footing small and unsure when approaching the back of the chair, and the shadow slumped in it. She noticed the glass first, dimly reflecting amber from the bedside lamp and upturned in a grip that dangled loosely off one side to brush the rug. 

Piece by piece the events that had transpired before were surfacing, each step harboring an added tremble until she had closed the distance without even realizing. Rounding the chair added the final piece and completed the fractured memory, and the girl held her breath.

Ruby watched in awe as Cinder’s amber aura pulsed to her heartbeat, fanning across her chest and down each arm in a faint glow.  
Gone was the sheath of burgundy that had ignited against her will, replaced with a loose gown of sheer midnight hanging comfortably from her shoulders by straps that had strayed low in her slouch. 

Cinder’s head was bowed away from Ruby who still hadn’t found air to breathe. She saw harder, painful-looking marks resisting the mending stitch of her aura, viciously tattooing her skin with the same glowing details Cinder had sewn into her old garment. 

Ruby glanced down at her palm, wincing at the faint lines that mirrored where she had placed her hand the dress before. They didn’t hurt, not in the same way they hurt Cinder, but the mark was a reminder of the consequences that came with a touch absent of permission. 

The lesson itself lingered like the pain of a freshly opened wound, hands shaking when reaching down. Ruby fought herself not to touch pale shoulders, but unsure of what else to do when repeating the woman’s name in a broken whisper.

A groan had Cinder convulse, and gods, it had felt like forever ago that she saw those licking amber flames acknowledge her in a gaze that wasn’t blotched in painful, bleeding red.  
The breath that Ruby had been holding exhaled and trembled all at once. 

She was regarded for a long moment, distant and groggy turned contemplative before Cinder focused on straightening her posture. The glass she had consumed was abandoned on the plush rug before easing herself up with forearms wrist-down on the chair supports, a slow effort that Ruby only wished to help with.

“Did I frighten you, girl?”

It took a moment for the words to fully reach her.. But the shake of her head that eventually came was automatic, wearing a smile that was equal parts distant as it was trained.

A slow and tired smile of her own tugged at the corner of Cinder’s lips and Ruby’s face lit up as if she hadn’t just been shaking in dazed confusion. Color rushed to stain the former huntress’ cheeks in pink as an unsteady, glowing hand reached up, moving the girls’ knotted bangs away from blank eyes. “Such a brave little jewel.” 

The warmth of her hand was all-consuming. Every frayed nerve that been forced to stand on end, every moment that had filled her chest in turbulent dread and rooted her in fear were blanketed in static as if they were nothing but a forgotten dream. 

Ruby stood with arms limp by her sides and her cheek turned in to the aura-consumed cradle that was so generously offered, breathing in the sweet spice that tinted Cinder’s wrist.

“Bravery deserves to be rewarded. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Her hum was formed in no particular response, only earnest compliance, too absorbed by Cinder’s throaty words dripping like warmed honey down her spine. For it, Cinder’s fatigued smile edged only shy of wicked. 

Knuckles smoothed down Ruby’s jaw, airy and light when in actual fact the woman’s touch felt more like electricity travelling down her neck. She brushed beneath the loose cotton of Ruby’s shirt, fanning out across her collar to steal her breath entirely.  
Ruby had yearned for this, even _craved_. 

Fingertips ghosted to the top button, absentmindedly plucking it open while Ruby was still too deep in the throws of sensation to notice. Silver yes opened after a moment longer, distant and bleary and wholly docile. 

Suddenly everything shifted, Ruby was off her feet with alarming abruptness.  
A flicker of hunger being the last thing she saw before she was dragged by the wrist to fill the empty space in Cinder’s lap. Warm fingertips encased the back of the girls neck, their foreheads meeting immediately and it was there she could fully see the penchant Cinder held for the way her dull eyes refocused into dazzling silver.

Ruby couldn’t stop her breathing coming down hard and erratic on Cinder’s lips. 

Their closeness was so sudden and unexpected that she struggled to find support anywhere except on Cinder’s shoulders. Something of an apology tumbled out of the girls mouth, quivering and unsure as she tried not to touch in the ways she knew were not permitted. This was too much.

“Hush...It’s alright.” The coo was soothing around her heart, softening the thumping beneath her breast but doing nothing for the blood pumping in her ears. 

Warmth fell over Ruby’s clammy hands, guided to press against the aura weaving Cinder’s wounds shut, and she might have noticed how the swirls of runes felt distinctly warmer against her palms had the way Cinder breathed against her lips in return not been so entirely distracting. 

She was looking at her so very differently. 

“But…” Ruby choked out, eyes flickering, reflecting an expectant gaze of subdued flame. “You.. You were hurting. What?-...”

The words echoed every unanswered question on her mind since Cinder had returned, each of them painted as plain as day on Ruby’s face, but when the smile below her faded she suddenly wondered if she had said something wrong. “..Did I-?”

“They were trying to take you from me, Ruby.” 

There was no question in Cinder’s tone, no room for the girl to wonder who or why, only that the way her lips wrapped around Ruby’s name was the truest conviction in her world.  
“I couldn’t let them.” 

Painted nails and light fingertips continued to caress the backs of Ruby’s hands, encouraging a heavier press on the woman’s collar until the thrum of aura suddenly became absent beneath her grip. The younger girl eased back in confusion, unsure whether to be more concerned by the absent glow or of Cinder’s harrowing statement. Her concern was disregarded.

“See? All better.”

Cinder’s arm lifted between them invitingly. Ruby couldn't help but hold her breath, tracing the patterns with a single twitching finger as if she were brushing over broken glass. 

Each line sunk in shallow as if cut from Cinder's porcelain skin with a knife's edge, but where the girl’s brow met in concern, nothing betrayed the smile Cinder wore. 

“I’ll consider them mementos of the day Ruby Rose saved my life.” 

The girl didn’t hear her. It was along a particularly grueling and deep-set scar occupying the back of the woman’s hand that Ruby’s attention had fully died. And where no one but Ruby could hear, her ears were quietly filling with noise.

_"But If we are going to do this"_

Fingertips drifted absentmindedly to a diamond-shaped mark resting on the lower half of Cinder’s forearm, circling the swirls of runes that confined it over-

_"Then we are going to have to do this together."_

And over-  
And-

Pink and trembling lips rested apart in short breaths, iris’ engorged by blown pupils. She was... sweating, quaking as if the core of her body was grinding and vibrating her into pieces from the inside out. 

When Cinder’s face suddenly broke into focus Ruby could feel a grip sunk tight around her jaw, tearing her attention back to see a still and unreadable expression.

“You must be tired.” The abruptness of Cinder’s statement anchored Ruby in the present, and as shaken as she was, the girl still managed to unthinkingly nod. 

The woman gestured them to their feet, Ruby not helping but to notice how Cinder followed somewhat slower and more carefully. Still, the woman managed to rise to her full height, overshadowing a smaller and unusually more fragile Ruby.

Cinder’s tooled expression didn’t change when their eyes met, and Ruby clutched at the front of her shirt to keep steady, sinking in on herself a little more.

Thankfully the chastisement she expected never came, and instead Cinder presented her with slow, unhurried instructions to retrieve items from the washroom; antiseptic, cotton wool, towels and dressings. It was only when Cinder reached to uncover the dressing on her tender shoulder did realization slot into place.

Ruby already knew where they were; very few things in her immediate vicinity ever changed location so she set to her task right away with renewed vigor.

The items were wrapped in towels when Ruby returned to see Cinder regarding her new markings in the vanity mirror, and not much paying attention to the way the woman’s lips were stretched thin at their edges the younger girl smiled blankly.

“I think they’re...kind of beautiful.” She confessed over her shoulder, requested supplies splayed out on their bed, methodically picking up each to move to the bedside table with Antiseptic first  
-and she missed the surface, dropping it to the floor.

“Oh?” Cinder called behind her, inquisitive sort of bemusement too forced to convince anyone that wasn’t Ruby; her attention remained engrossed on scars maring her jawline that hadn’t quite healed, and where the dust trinket would have hung from she was now entirely absent an earlobe. 

“Yea” Ruby answered, flat smile fixed and vacant. She moved the cotton wool next, missing.

Dropping it to the floor. 

“The way they curve and spiral are just like the patterns on Weiss’ Myrtenaster-”

The bulb inside the bedside lamp shattered.

Ruby was still smiling, but something was lurching and battering around on her insides, a dormant instinct triggering alarms somewhere in her brain. She couldn’t see anything, but she didn’t need to to know that her outstretched hands were trembling in the air around nothing.

Bands of dread coiled around her stomach until the pain stole the smile from her face and she looked around herself, something inside her disconnecting entirely.  


“I-I-...”

Four eyes, with two a mere reflection did nothing to otherwise convince Ruby that something monstrous had it’s glare set on her, ablaze. 

“I’m...sorry. I don’t… I don’t know why I-”

“Say it again.” 

Ruby could hear fire smolder on the edges of her even tone, and the girl froze like a doe in headlights. Even in the throes of pain Cinder demonstrated the ability to limit the extents of her anger, even at her capacity it was her subordinates that were the ones to bear the brunt, not her. Never her. 

But zeroed entirely on the girl was a fire that burned the very moisture from the air between them, and Ruby’s knees shook. She didn’t understand. 

“Say. It. Again.” Cinder seethed out, matching the girl’s retreat step for step until Ruby had knocked the broken lamp- Cinders scroll- and everything else to the floor when finally ending at the bed meeting the backs of her knees.

The angle forced to look up at the much taller woman was harsh, blazes of light narrowed to thin slits saw the shimmer of cold sweat breaking out across Ruby’s forehead, held her vacant eyes solid but imparted fear in every other fiber of the girls body.

“...I..Don’t remember-”

The whisper of a plea on the edge of Ruby’s tongue barely made into the air as painted claws reached and eased into her hairline, meticulous in capturing the back of her head in a grip not intended to be painful. 

“Do you wish to?” Sparks broke free against the blackness of the room and cupped in Cinder’s palm was a small flame only bright enough to illuminate the even slopes of the woman’s face, licking just shy of the plunging neckline of her nightwear. “I would not deny you.”

Sharpness bit the nape of her neck, sunk against old scar tissue that she couldn’t see but knew crept out from beneath the collar of her shirt. It ripped a tremor through Ruby, each and every mark punctured into her subconscious manifested nightmares that only Cinder’s heady touch could sedate. 

“But I cannot promise that what you find will be pleasant.”

Something in the the way Cinder had purred down at her between teeth was dizzying, Ruby falling slack beneath the melting touch that dragged her on her toes to press their chests together. Onyx edges tightened around her skin, clawing to the surface the fear that had been provoked and stealing cries from between her lips until Ruby shook against her violently.

“..Or I can help you forget.”

Yes. “-Please” Her chest was buckling with the strain of breathing and It hurt so bad. But Cinder could make it go away, she could make it stop. _She could make it feel good again_.

“I want to hear you say it.” 

She remembered seeing her in the corridor with the others, she remembered being unable to take her eyes away from hers until the last moment. 

She remembered cradling torn metal hands in hers, hearing the roar of the arena, the echo of raid sirens. Watching the cruel puncture of a glass arrow. 

“I want to forget.” 

Her admittance was enough and It was the flash of hunger ripping across Cinder’s expression that halted Ruby’s breathing altogether. Her hand viced on the girls neck, willing her knees to bend and sink her to sit on the edge of their bed. 

It was as if Cinder somehow knew that inside her a voice was willing her to run, that even with nowhere to go Ruby still might try. Though the bite of nails eased, the way the woman gripped in warning did not.  
The young girl was anchored down with her despair, with her loneliness. With Cinder. 

Ruby didn’t look up when the warming flare Cinder had been carefully cradling was snuffed out with a dying hiss. She held her gaze forward and distant like a frozen animal with its scruff in the jaws of a predator. Warmth, slow and unfamiliar eased down on either side of her, clamping her thighs and filling her lap with a pressure that jerked air into her lungs as quickly as it was torn out, each breath coming labored and thick with fear. 

Still she didn’t want to look, tears overflowing when she squeezed her eyes tightly shut. 

Her dreams never strayed far from one another. Colours, voices and names that she recognized but didn't know were addressed passively. It was only in her dreams that Cinder would see them as no less than a betrayal, so she thought.

The thin of damp eyelids did nothing to shield her from raging heat as it burned down against her face, demanding obedience. Ruby simply had no choice. 

She withered where she sat, blearily staring up at the woman who stole everything she was, filled her with emptiness until the poison offered on the edge of a wicked silver tongue was only and all she ached for, like a drug. 

Warm hands cupped the curves of her jaw as if handling cracking porcelain, drawing her up to brush supple, trembling lips with the swipe of a tongue. She was so close that a sob wracked through the girl. Ruby could taste her.

“-Please.. _Please please-_ ” She didn’t recognize her own voice, prayers spoken into and only to herself for so long sounded alien.

The risks of reaching to touch were lost in her desperation. Fingertips prickling, they begged to touch the narrow line of pale, bared shoulders.  
Ruby expected her reach to meet only air, to be left utterly denied.  
Anything but the thread of nimble fingers between small and clammy digits guiding her neglected touch. 

Knees leant heavily on either side of Ruby melted open in her lap, the girl almost too dizzy to watch the way Cinder moved their hands- her hands to cradle the slender length of her neck, meeting the hard angles of her jawline, and sliding back into hair that felt thick and soft between her fingers.

Narrow eyes fell closed, chin tilting with parted lips breathing out a vibration from low in Cinder’s throat. Ruby broke out in a crimson flush. 

“I want…” Pressed to the edge of Cinder’s lips, the pad of each fingertip was treated to a kiss, and between each, her words were heavy and whispered no less as commands. “-your hands to hold me..” 

Soft and wet, Cinder indulged in each of Ruby’s fingers, lowering her mouth to the knuckle until the girl’s labored breathing fell into a chorus of high pitched whines. “-I want your lips to kiss me.”

The girl couldn’t take her eyes away, even as she felt them sting and dry she refused even to blink in fear that the mirage would dissipate, that she would be left cold and empty as she too often was.

She fought with the possibility that she hadn’t woken up at all; Ruby was no stranger to nightmarish dreams leaving her throbbing in ways that weren’t quite fear, but the mere images and flashes she’d experienced while asleep couldn’t hold a candle to the heat and slick of her small fingers between Cinder’s full lips. 

Watching, her blunted nail caught the supple shape as they hungrily formed words that had the girl reaching, shaking with a hysterical sob, the Cinder she feared like the coming of death itself melting away. 

“I want your body to obey me.” 

Their lips slanted together. She tasted of dark leather and wine, the edge of sulfur heavy and almost toxic inside her throat, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t stop.  
Ruby vehemently drank down every drop of foul poison fed from Cinder’s tongue, turning her sleeve and bearing every unsated, neglected desire the woman ever elicited from her. 

A throaty rumble of laughter vibrated against Ruby’s skipping heartbeat before the sound was caught between tongue and teeth with her mouth pressing down, hot and so deliberately slow against Ruby’s fervent need that the girl keened dizzily up into the kiss.

“You truly have no idea, do you?” They parted, heated lips pressing the length of the girls neck, each kiss punctuated by a low moan, trailing until teeth grazed against soft skin. “Just how much of a pleasure you are? How beautiful you have become?”

The perception of time was a concept long lost to her as one day unknowingly bled into the next; Cinder was all that served as her constant, the only gravity to pull her from white, airless noise and ground her in substance, deep in color and fire. 

Heavy hands eased beneath her exposed collar, pressing insistently until Ruby’s back met their bed and left the girl shadowed and trembling beneath a hungry golden gaze.

Pretty- No, the woman above her was beautiful. Cinder shared secret smile with a sliver of teeth, dark waves pierced with ash surrounding them in an intimate shroud. The marred skin Ruby could see up close looked deep, sunken to the bone of her jaw and yet it didn’t seem to deter her from wearing the unhealed disfigurement as if it were her birthright. 

Ruby couldn’t shoulder her own defects as gracefully or as beautifully as Cinder could, and before she could voice this truth Ruby was stopped by a whisper of sharp claws easing her loose shirt apart, barely regarding her frantic scramble to clutch at the fabric shut.

“P-please, you won't like how it looks. I-it's ugly.”

She’d seen them once, stolen a look into Cinder’s vanity mirror in her absence. Touching the thickly laid scar tissue snaking over her shoulders and neck caused her to forever shake at the memory of the gaunt, pale girl she had found staring in mirror back at her. It was a mistake she never made again. 

“My dear.” Ruby held fists around the soft cotton, only for them to be moved aside in a grip shy of harsh. Gravelly tones laden with concern were pressed against the shell of her ear. “...Whatever do you mean?” 

Ruby tried not to squirm as the graze of sharp fingernails traced patterns all over her chest, sending her pulse into overdrive. Heavy and warm, Cinder had fit herself between Ruby’s pale, gangly legs, her throaty moans accompanying open-mouthed kisses lavished against the girls overworked heartbeat. 

Ruby could feel her hair sticking to her forehead as she panted into the limited space remaining between them. Her hands were abandoned somewhere above her head, too far outside herself to stop Cinder’s hands melting almost entirely over each small shoulder. Fingertips eased towards her shoulder blades, meeting the bubbled scarring that lay the most dense.  
Her touch fanned inward to crest each shoulder blade, then up to cradle the back of her neck entirely more tentative than before- but that didn’t matter. 

Ruby’s eyes were squeezed shut. She lay bare and exposed for the woman to touch, to scrutinize as she did with everything that didn't meet her desires. The former huntress was already committing the feel of her lips to memory. She would never kiss her again after this, Cinder would never want to touch her- 

“You feel amazing.”

Her chin was tilted up, bleary gaze recaptured and zeroed on golden rings almost entirely eclipsed by blown pupils. 

“W...what?-” Ruby croaked. “You-You don’t hate them? You don’t-”

Something in the way Cinder chuckled as she peeled the girl’s shirt from shivering shoulders was suppressed beneath a secretive smile, petting ropey strands of hair from her damp forehead and filling the girl with an immeasurable sense of relief. She continued, humming candidly;

“There’s nothing there little one.”

Chest’s pressed together heavy and flush. Cinder slid her hands down, bypassing the hem of loose shorts to claim the space behind Ruby’s knees, drawing her legs up and around to cross at the small of her back and giving the confused girl barely a moment to process what had been said. Their hips were sliding and friction, desire burning Ruby alight from the inside out with the roll of full hips spreading her thighs the only sensation her brain could process. 

That, and that blistering, dizzying heat wasn’t limited to each indulgent pass of the woman’s lips. Cinder’s skin was positively alight, stealing the very sweat from Ruby's brow. Nails brushed like hot needles beneath the waistband of her shorts, claiming her backside in a possessive grope. 

The hitch of surprise that stopped in Ruby’s throat made it to Cinder’s ears, but she hesitated to call the offered smile a kind one when it tugged the edges of her lips with blade-point sharpness. Her fingers dipped, scalding and smearing against sticky wetness coating the insides of her thighs, causing the girl to buck hard. 

“C-Cinder…I-I can’t-”

Think. Process. _Breathe_.  
Broken whines were backed up inside her tight throat, worsened still by the way the woman's fingers seemed to never stop moving, slickly gliding, toying near where she agonizingly pulsed.

Ruby knew little of the rules of intimacy, only that a heavy sensation in the emptiness of her chest would plague her. When Cinder's eyes seemed to drink her in, when the gentle gravel of her voice whispered smoothly against her ear her blood ran hot, filling that empty cavity with a craving she didn’t understand.

“Don't worry dear.”

It was as if she could sense the girls trepidation. Knuckles paled to white, Ruby gripping Cinder's shoulders for dear life when her shorts were stripped and discarded as nothing but an offensive barrier. 

“I'll take care of everything”

_Thud thud thud_

Fingertips parted against slick and wet, spreading lips apart to dip into heat until Ruby's spine curved away from the mattress.

_THUD THUD THUD_

Distant shouting bordered on the desperate, but only in the back of Ruby’s mind. Resplendent white noise overrode everything and all, unaware even as her hips matched the full touch drawing out a slow, deliberate rhythm from her shivering body. Overcast with heavy lashes, Cinder’s eyes glowed behind flames the color of firelight gold as they heated Ruby’s face.  
An unstable high kept Ruby fixed just long enough to witness the clarity bursting between them, realizing that Cinder wasn’t looking at her differently at all.

She was looking at her like it was the first time all over again. 

And just like that, Ruby’s high caved at the dying hiss of flaming eyes, the growing commotion beyond their room carrying a word to both their ears that they simply couldn’t ignore. 

Grimm. 

Cinder was off of her in a cyclone of liquid gold and pre-tongue runes, grafting a silhouette of scarlet and asymmetry to her skin that Ruby would never get used to seeing back lit against the light of the open doorway. 

“Nono- n-no, please-” Ruby was only half off the bed in a scramble by the time Cinder had made it to the door without a moment’s regard for the girl she had reduced to a trembling, flushed mess. “Cinder- please, p-please don’t-” No, no not again. Cold, unrelenting fear viced around her lungs, cut and taxed her breathing as panic began to rise like an ill omen. She couldn’t leave, not now. 

“Stay here, Ruby.”

“P-ple-”

“ _Stay. Here_.”

And she was gone, a sliver of artificial fluorescence cracking through the ajar doorway being all that remained in her wake. Ruby’s legs buckled when her feet met the floor, sinking until her back met the bed frame, rigid and shaking. The room was plunged into ice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad people out there are enjoying this. I'm by no means great at broaching this particular topic, but it has been interesting to both research and write.  
> This chapter pushed the M rating a bit so will probably increase to E from here. 
> 
> For those of you that were wondering how exactly WBY were able to push Cinder into retreat, you'll have to find out next chapter. :)  
> I'll say this much- dust is very volatile. Imagine if you ignited it?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Existing through our need to self oblige leads not to gluttony, but to humanity in it's most corrosive form.

Cinder held her spine straight, focused ahead if it meant only to centre herself. 

‘How did the Grimm find their way here?’ The pensive intone should have been foremost on her mind, not the way her blood was running hot. She knew better. 

As the ring of glass heels born from surrounding dust quickened their chime, the sound of gunfire thundering from the upper levels became intermittent before falling disconcertingly silent. 

It wasn't unheard of for a Grimm to scatter from it’s pack: Anima’s rocky woodland was treacherous, shielded by a valley of mountains that rendered radio’s in static. It was only logical that a Grimm in the area could lose it's bearings entirely. 

And that a bunker dating back to the Great War would exist here. 

Fortunate for Roman Torchwick that he insisted on being so useful, presenting his ‘Slice of Haven’ as he so distastefully described the run-down complex. To flee amidst the chaos of Beacon’s demise had been a timed effort, moving as swiftly as the news itself had spread to the other kingdoms. With Anima's borders sealing behind them, their footholds had been established almost immediately, no less on the doorstep to Mistral. 

Cinder’s hand fell on the button to take service elevator up far heavier than necessary. Two floors underground and in the middle of nowhere. They were, essentially, off the grid. 

Pacing back and forth, she could feel loose floor panels giving beneath her step as the creaking lift dragged to the ground floor at an infuriating speed. It was the price paid for a hideout operating on prewar Atlesian technology, and the wait was hardly helping to distract Cinder from the way she stung all over. 

She could barely admit even to herself; Her torso, arms, face. Her pride.

Aura would repair the damage in due course, but there wasn’t much in the way of remedying how uncharacteristically unprepared she had been for the attack, no matter how meticulously planned. Unsurprisingly, that much could only be expected from an Atlesian Specialist.

Not to speak of one bearing the Schnee name.

With a shudder the elevator creaked to a halt, and Cinder paced down a lengthy corridor just adjacent to the main warehouse. Voices that couldn’t reach her before carried along the walls, shouting and strangled.

She swiped her tongue across her lips. A steadying inhale was supposed to steel frayed nerves- but the faint taste of rose petals on her tongue wouldn't allow it, treacherous and lingering on her senses.The urgency in her step faltered when touching the pads of her fingers to her lips, breathing in the distant scent of a blooming flower in midsummer heat; Her sullen, sweet little Ruby.

She succumbed like a flurry of petals trembling on the gale of a storm. It was almost unthinkable that the same girl who turned her gleaming, silver gaze to face impossible odds at the top of Beacon Tower now lay only existing, wholly dependant. Wholly empty. 

And wholly hers. 

Fractured and off-kilter was how Cinder had chosen to keep her, rewarding her weak and easily swayed heart with a nurturing hand. Distorting Ruby's perception remained a current, carefully executed task which painted Cinder in the only source of light the girl would receive. Unsurprisingly, Roman's glee when approached to play the malevolent role was only parallel to the sum of money Cinder had paid him to do so - and so he did, bending each and every truth that Little Red wholeheartedly believed in. 

Given enough time isolated from colour, people, or anything that resembled more than the sound of her own heartbeat, Ruby had been prepared to believe any lie Torchwick spun, but most importantly that she was a victim rescued from atrocities committed by Ozpin and his so-called combat schools. That her guaranteed safety came aligned only with Cinder and no other. 

Steel rattled not far off in the distance, dragging Cinder from her reverie to set about a faster pace. She expected a quadrupedal that could traverse the mountainside with ease had happened upon the front entrance, that unsuspecting White Fang soldiers unable to control their fear had attracted it inside. 

Throwing open the double doors to the main warehouse with flames armed at her fingertips, she was ready to purge the Grimm to a blackened smoulder. 

Cinder expected to find destruction, an ongoing fight against a larger Grimm. But on the floor Faunus bodies lay strewn and sunken in blood, drained from the same single, large puncture aimed directly at each of their jugulars. Executed. 

Golden and sharp her eyes were drawn up beyond the bodies by the sporadic sound of clicking, plunging the blood pumping wildly through her veins into ice.

She saw Emerald and Mercury awkwardly knelt on the concrete, ensnared in red tendrils tangling their legs to their arms. Over them floated an inky blot, a shell of teeth and broken bone pulsing around a core of murky red. Nonplussed by Cinder’s arrival it hovered steadily as if in wait, all whilst Mercury and Emerald struggled to gasp past the tendrils wound around their throats. 

Cinder was rooted on the spot, their eyes silently begging for her to intervene, but this was no ordinary Grimm. The remaining Faunus that had somehow managed to stay out of reach of it’s knifed limbs had it surrounded, dust-powered weapons raised. 

“Wait.” Cinder announced, making herself known to the rest of the room. Eyes wide and frightened followed her as she stepped by the bodies to approach the Grimm, her hand quietly signalling the remaining Faunus to step back. 

The Seer clicked in quickened beats, the change of rhythm echoing between corrugated walls just beyond the chime of Cinder’s heels. She stopped at a safe distance, unconcerned that it might harm her, but rather those in it’s grip. 

Emerald was gasping, quickly turning blue while the coils around Mercury made to focus on keeping his legs pinned to the floor, and above them both the Seer’s bladed limbs precariously hung in gentle sway. 

“I’m the one she sent you to search for. Aren’t I?” Cinder began barely above a whisper. “So release them. Your quarry is with me.”

She kept her focus without allowing her voice to waver, unable to afford showing weakness here despite how her pulse beat wildly against her ear drums. 

Other than it’s unnervingly accelerated click the Seer did not seem to acknowledge her, and Cinder could sense doubt from the surrounding Faunus that a Grimm could comprehend human tongue let alone respond in any way, but the Maiden knew that with whatever cognitive function it possessed it was assessing it’s orders, deliberating it’s next moves. 

Finally, the ropes loosened. 

Emerald heaved forward on her hands, gulping down air the moment the Seer had released her. Similarly Mercury moved on his hands and knees, kicking the limbs away to catch Emerald beneath the arm, hoisting them both up and out of the Grimm’s reach.

“Piece of crap jellyfish” He cussed under his breath. 

Cinder glanced between them, jaw drawn tight. They were shaken but otherwise unharmed, Mercury casting her a mute gaze of thanks before turning back to the now passive Seer, focused grey narrowed dangerously. 

“Boss, let me take that thing out.” He snarled. From where Emerald was leant on her knees she managed a scowl of equal magnitude, one hand trembling as it reached back for her holstered sickle. “It got the spook on us before, but I ain’t gonna let it-”

“You will do no such thing.” Cinder said quietly. 

Her disciples shared a stunned gaze, uncertainty flashing across Emeralds face first. 

“But… Ma’am it slaughtered the Faunus here. It was about to-”

“And I want you both down below. Take the remaining workforce with you and ensure they remain there until this has been dealt with.” Cinder didn’t allow Emerald to finish, fixing them both with an icy look. 

Not sparing them a moment more Cinder turned back to regard the Seer floating patiently in wait, her tightly drawn expression causing doubt creep onto both Mercury and Emeralds faces. 

The boy breathed out of his nose when sluggishly Emerald was the first to move away, neither convinced of what exactly ‘dealing with it’ would entail. Trumping his apprehension with a snort, Mercury eventually tore away in Emeralds trail- almost colliding with the tanned girl as he did. 

“What the- What’s the hold up.”

Looking down he saw pools of red widening in unmistakable panic, fixed on the double doors Cinder had just entered through, and as the remaining Faunus barrelled through them they paid no need to the small, dishevelled form that stood barefoot in blood matched to the same shade of her dark, unkempt hair. 

She was white, and from here Mercury stood he could see, trembling from head to toe, her cheeks splashed with tears. “What the heck is she doing up here?”

“...

C...Cinder?” 

No. Not here.

The woman turned stiffly, smouldering gold clashing with distant, blunt silver shadowed beneath the red tips of messy bangs. 

Ruby Rose stood numbly by the double door entrance to the warehouse, taking small steps into a space packed densely with blood and bodies, unable to avert herself from the horror of her surroundings, and Cinder’s heart viced twofold. 

Dim candle light and artificial fluorescence had stolen the rosy tinge from Ruby’s cheeks, and for a traitorous moment her thoughts weren’t of the very violence and bloodshed she had worked to shield the girl from, only how milky, pale skin seemed to glow in the natural light pouring from the shutters. 

Her presence dropped a heavy weight on Cinder’s shoulder’s, dread too slow to soak into her bones before the temptation to taste the very tears from the girls cheeks with her lips caused all lucid thoughts to tailspin. 

“Boss! Look out!!”

She heard the air whip before the warning had fully left Mercury’s mouth.

Bladed points hurtled to silence Ruby’s arresting fear, but the Maiden’s reaction was snap, and without thought reflex turned her into the attack before it could reach the girl.

Summoned glass stretched from her grip, only barely forming into an edged weapon of use when Cinder sliced upward through the ropes of the Seers elasticated limbs, combusting the floating entity into a curdled shriek.

Cinder managed to stave their momentum; the blades lost their target, carrying some way before uselessly clattering against concrete around Ruby’s feet. 

The following silence was deafening, tension dense enough to strangle where even Ruby’s cold, vacant expression and sobs from her heaving chest bore no noise. Emerald and Mercury stood stunned, and though they could loosely theorise what had just happened it was Cinder and Cinder alone who understood the sheer magnitude of her actions. 

Whether it was instinctual, or an attempt of self-preservation a Grimm did not hesitate in the presence of a human with eyes like Ruby’s, be it last Grimm in existence it would still charge blindly and foolishly forward. 

Though a creature with little purpose in the destruction of mankind was without contrariety to this fact, the Seer floating before them crooked and limp was not here for this purpose, Cinder knew that. 

So did she. 

“...How nice to finally see you again, Cinder.”

The voice emanating from the Seer spoke unhurriedly, jarringly humble in spite of all that surrounded them, of what had just transpired. 

The Maiden’s pulse beat wildly in her ears, knuckles whitening hotly until the grips of her makeshift, imperfect blades became viscous enough sink and mold between her fingers.  
The dark, syrupy eye swimming within the gelatinous body of the Grimm was fixed upon her, but it was the voice that froze her soul to a dead stop, mind cold with numb shock to all and everything.

“Salem.”

-

Something in the click of Cinder’s heels was off, each chime trembling in strain as if they might shatter with the next step she took. 

Diversions in plans were inevitable, and any goal took setbacks into account in the event of compensating for them. Find a different route to accomplish the same means, make use of the resources on hand and if necessary, recruit more. It was this kind initiative that Cinder acted on by second nature.

Amber glinted over her shoulder to glance at the Seer following quietly, albeit slowly in her shadow. She hadn’t been foolish enough to believe that this wasn’t inevitable, yet why had she refused to account for it?

The Seer followed her through the bunker to an unused room on the derelict side of the hanger, intending to see this discussion through alone where all focus could be solely upon her.  
Mercury and Emerald did not argue with her orders a second time, especially when it involved escorting Ruby to the furthest part of the bunker and guarding the door after ensuring she was locked in. 

Ruby… She could complicate everything beyond repair. 

Cinder didn’t notice how painful the lump in her throat was until she swallowed. 

Opening a door, she had led them to a room that at some point had functioned as an office, one that undoubtedly belonged to an officer during the Great War; The obsolete symbol of Mantle was identifiable between cracked drywall, as well as brandished on various files and paperwork strewn across the room. 

Allowing the Seer to enter first Cinder closed the door behind them after casting a glance down the corridor to ensure she hadn’t been followed again. 

“Paranoia is unbecoming of you, my dear.”

For some reason she hadn’t expected Salem’s voice, and prayed her mistress hadn’t notice how her shoulders tensed suddenly. 

“Of course.” She answered evenly. 

Cinder approached the Seer, and attempting to ignore the thumping in her ears she held her arms rigid at her side, bowing at the waist in such a way that angled her near-perfectly with the floor, dipping far deeper than necessary. 

No voice acknowledged her greeting this time with only the Seers rhythmic clicking serving to fill the tense silence. When the moment felt longer than an eon, Cinder blinked, slowly swallowing before attempting to bridge the gap:

“Salem. I wish to-”

“Do not speak.”

The younger woman’s spine seized, her bow suddenly becoming painful to sustain. She stared at the worn, patchy carpet beneath her heels, searching for anything to steady and centre her, but Salem continued. “I do not believe the nature of my dissatisfaction is in question, but I will say i’m surprised that you would choose stand before me with such arrogance. Rise.” 

A deep, quiet breath was taken in through her nostrils, eyes squeezing shut for just a moment before she forced her spine straight with arduous effort. In the Seer’s murky belly nothing gave Salem away, only the abyssal swirl of crimson smoke. 

“I am going to ask you some very simple questions that require very simple answers.” She said, distaste becoming more and more prominent on the edges of her words. “Tell me, how long has it been since your last report?”

Cinder crossed her hands at the small of her back, out of the Seer’s and Salem’s sight to allow her fist to ball, tight enough to shake. 

“Eight seasons, Ma’am.” 

“Eight Seasons. Eight.” The razor's-edge on Salem’s tongue pressed in on Cinder’s vitals until the woman fought not to visually recoil. Her inhale was supposed to be calming when instead it stuttered in her chest as her mistress continued, slow and controlled; “I would like for you to explain to me..exactly why that is.”

“Unless I have misinterpreted my orders, our goal is to establish presence in Mistral. With the Kingdoms on high alert following our efforts in Vale, it was agreed that an indirect assault on Haven Academy-”

“And what do you pretend to know of my goals?”

Out of touch and out of contact; All that were present knew the answer, it would have been foolish of Cinder to claim otherwise but the tense silence that lay beyond the Seer told her that Salem’s question demanded a response. 

“Nothing.” Cinder finally said, low enough that the word barely left her lips. “I have acted in my best judgement, as you have always trusted me to do.” 

“And yet…I see your judgement has led you to undesired outcomes.” There was no mistaking the critical assessment that had caused Cinder’s hand to drift, open palm at the small of her back pressing to touch raw scars creeping from the cuff of her wrist. Her chin sunk a little as if it might hide the heavy wound that snuck along her jaw, and notch where her lobe used to be. 

Though, there was nothing to be done about her state of dress. Dark lace and crimson asymmetry held to her body like a second skin, but where the signature sigils would have glowed with warm power they remained only as ruptured threads of dust, scorched to black and exposed like frayed wires. 

“Explain.”

Their unmarked Bullhead routinely travelled to the outskirts of Mistral, slowly leaking Cinders authority into the lawless lower levels of the city, building capital, acquiring small businesses both honest and.. specific, until loyalties eventually fell in line.  
That had been the task assigned to her, albeit whilst such orders were tethered to valid goals

Cinder took a deep breath. “Our position in Mistral was leaked to the White Fang splinter group in conjunction with three huntresses. Granted the attack was carried out with unexpected magnitude; it reeked of desperation.”

Lacing together subterfuge with half-truths spouted as if a tongue of their own.

True to her word the landing pad had been rigged with explosives. Such things couldn’t harm her as it had the Bullhead, it’s pilots and her Faunus escorts, but the blurs of White, Black and Yellow that followed were another story, and one that Cinder chose her words carefully in telling.

“In ensuring the secrecy of our operation, my efforts were overextended.”

Had Cinder not bore the brunt of the attack she may even have applauded Weiss Schnee’s command of her semblance, and what unorthodox technique she had conjured to ignite the very molecules of dust itself. 

Sewing dust into clothing was an age-old artistry Cinder prided herself in, but not even she could have foreseen it to be exploited against her.

However unconventional the application of Weiss Schnee’s semblance was, Cinder only remembered the velocity of impact targeted at the raw lines of dust in her clothing...closely followed by a volatile and explosive reaction that had sent her sprawling across the landing deck.

The noise still rung in her ears, vibrating the very roots of her teeth.

It wasn’t until she’d fully come to that Cinder realised the extend of what the little white witch had done, and with her Aura as it’s fuel the dust had ignited post explosion, fusing her burning clothing to her skin. Until Ruby stopped it.

Salem remained silent, informing no reaction to Cinder’s explanation, so she continued “The attack nor it’s perpetrators are a concern any longer, I’ve taken care-”

“I did hope…” Salem spoke over her shortly before she softly exhaled a sigh that had Cinder’s brows gathered. Her mistress was uncharacteristically quiet as if considering her words. 

The next drawl told Cinder it was anything but: “...That your isolation had forced growth upon you. That you would continue to temper the edge of your newfound powers and drive results through your own initiative.” Her voice did not waver, did not carry anger nor disappointment, but all the same Cinder felt a bolt of uneasiness through her chest. 

“How wrong I was.

Move your administration from this isolation.” The last word was punctuated on the razors edge of Salem’s teeth, and for the first time since their discussion began, Cinder recoiled. “And remove yourself from the sheer unutterable callowness you have surrendered to.”

The Maiden’s tongue lay heavy in her mouth, caged within a jaw clenched hard enough to hurt. There was nothing that could be said where Salem’s word lay in stone no less than the Gods themselves. It had been so long since she’d truly yielded, the final tilt of her waist caving into a deep bow, laden with the weight of Salem’s will. 

Avoiding looking into the Seer, gold remained downcast when Cinder turned to take her leave. 

“I do find it curious” Salem said. “That you would choose to keep the silver eyed girl with you, despite my warnings.”

Cinder stopped. Her feet, the air, everything suddenly weighed of lead, least of all the gaze pierced onto her nape. Salem spoke lightly, but there was no mistaking the demand driving her query, so as steadily as she could Cinder fixed her expression and turned back to regard the Seer. 

“Tell me, is she obedient?”

A cycle of questions tumbled in a nonsensical mess in Cinder’s head, and no less in the same moment that speaking her mind would undoubtedly yield serious consequences.

For the first time since the encounter began, Cinder felt real fear plucking at her frayed nerves. She didn’t like where this was going.

“Yes.” She asserted after a long moment, fighting tremors on the edge of her voice. “Perhaps of no practical use but her progress is promising. Given more time-”

“Time...an indulgence seldom had by many.” Salem’s voice was slow, a hint of displeasure in her tone. “And of which you most certainly have none, child.”

Nothing about this felt familiar, not the way Cinder’s heart seemed to wrench in different directions, or how the desire to open her mouth and dare protest against her mistress came without thought.

“The mission stands as your only priority” Salem interjected, her implication clear. “You are to migrate your administration to Haven within the week. As for the silver eyed girl, I have decided she will accompany me here as I determine her usefulness. I am sending Doctor Watts to-”

“Is that wise?” Anyone, even Cinder should have recognised she was exceeding the boundaries of Salem’s tolerance for failure.

As a child she witnessed subordinates throwing themselves before Salem’s feet to plead forgiveness, appealing to her wisdom or even more foolishly, her humanity: Their fates were sealed by their own hands, a truth the same as her own; risking herself over a negligible fixation was absurd. 

Yet the rationale born of discipline felt like a lesson long forgotten, in its place there was only heat and anger at the first mention of Ruby. Any intention Salem had for the girl only meant she be taken from her and Cinder could not, would not accept it.  
“Her kind around the Grimm, around you.” She pressed heavier, roughly. “If something were to happen-”

“Your assurance that the girl is obedient should alleviate such concerns should they not, Cinder? You have your orders.” 

“She's _mine_.” The Maiden snarled.

The air cracked, red ropes lashing towards her and ensnaring her throat in the Seer’s relentless grip. Cinder choked out, her eyes wide and aflame as it’s limbs coiled upward around her face and mouth, screeching as it wrenched her off-balance. Before Cinder had a chance to realise what was happening she was already on her knees.

“You’ve grown ignorant.”

Her lungs burned as she gasped for air, writhing more in shock and rising panic than any logical attempt to free herself, and for it the Seer was unyielding. Coiling around her left arm, it twisted from the shoulder to wrench up in a way a human limb should not.

Cinder stopped struggling immediately, keeping shouts of pain caged behind clenched teeth. 

“You’ve grown soft-”

Salem's voice rolled out slowly, layered in calm as if conversing with a familiar acquaintance. Apparently she was most comfortable with her most revered strung up and noosed. 

Strength flared in Cinder’s eyes, and as if in anticipation the Seer snuffed her defiance out by tearing her neck and shoulder in opposite directions, and the woman parted with a cry that shocked her as much as the pain did. 

“-And it is clear that you have lost your objectivity. Allowing you to operate independently was a mistake, and while the blame in trusting your selfish, self-driven motivations falls on my shoulders I cannot help but to find this behaviour sorely disappointing.”

Cinder buried her Aura deep down, knowing that to defend herself would be to admittance of her guilt, but as the coils around her pulled with the intention to tear she instead found herself stabbing in the dark out of desperation.

“...I-I gave you Ozpin, gave you Beacon!-”

“With the power granted to you by me. You would be wise not to forget that, child.

Now, do you submit?” Salem asked, dangerously soft and doing nothing for Cinder’s festering trepidation. 

Black began to dot the edges of her vision, swimming and airless her hands attempted to reach for the coils around her neck only to be wrenched and strangled tighter, utterly denied. 

She heard the question once again bled out from between Salem’s lips as though listening from underwater, all whilst the Seer bore down from above, Cinder’s tunnel of vision filled with the judgement of crimson eyes blurred into abyssal black as if sucking the very soul from the Maiden’s body. 

“Your infractions extend far beyond what I believed you capable of, and they will be addressed when your task in Mistral is complete. Make no mistake, Cinder.”

She fell numb, gears churning and stalling on one another without the capacity to conceptualise what to say. Salem had left no room for anything other than Cinder’s complete compliance, be it with her teeth bared and squeezed out as if each word rawed her throat until bloody. 

“I submit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit it has been a while. This chapter was HARD mostly because of the world building, but it's important and I've had it planned. 
> 
> Chapter 4 is just around the corner. Funny i've ended up doing these things in two's ;)
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the weak hours when we're fighting sleep, longing for each other's teeth, longing for the things we think we need to make it through, can I get lost in you?
> 
> It's human and it's tough, it is love but it wont be enough.

When Cinder leant heavily on the dresser surface she could feel the calm worn on her skin like armor breaking away, strained against the same impending eruption invoked before Salem: It itched like fire in her limbs, demanding reconciliation from her blinded, misguided judgement. Chin tilted low, her breaths were long, deep, trying to staunch the fire but it was no use. 

In the mirror, reflected pools of Silver gleaned from behind her, wide and filled with fear. 

Her fist collided with the glass, once, twice, and again until that reflection broke into an indiscernible amount of shards. A noise came from Ruby somewhere in the background, but Cinder didn’t stop, the surface of the vanity her next victim as she swept needles and threads, books and papers all across the floor. Fists balled she brought them down upon wood and broken glass until the surface splintered against her Aura.

Panting, enraged, Cinder managed by some miracle to use the final taught threads of her restraint to cage a scream of rage behind her teeth until her hands fell to rest numbly on the surface of the ruined dresser. 

Her shoulders trembled, looking up to regard what remained of her shattered image in a moment where there was no Ruby, and no Salem, only herself, scattered and in pieces.

Cinder’s eyes closed around flames that had lit in the moment, and searching deep into her bones for a slither of control she spoke to the room:

“I told you, explicitly, to stay here.”

Anger rolled up from her throat in waves, accusation laid thick in her growl. Agitated, organizational fingers threaded through her hair to correct wild strands as she cast a narrowed glance over one shoulder. 

Ruby stood behind her, rooted at a distance one might consider safe Cinder noted. The cuffs of her oversized shirt were gathered in nervous hands, fidgeting and unable to keep herself still. As wide as those eyes were, their sheen of brilliance, of life that Cinder had briefly witnessed in the warehouse had since shadowed over, downcast and detached. Terrified. 

Eyes pressing shut once more the Maiden looked away despite herself, but that wouldn’t block out Ruby’s rapid and broken breathing. Had the girl not kept her distance Cinder could have been convinced that the wash of her warm breath was the cause of her skin prickling. 

“I have gone to tremendous lengths to protect you, to keep you safe from harm and yet you insist on-” Disobeying her? Deifying her?

This wasn’t a White Fang lacky, not one of her disciples nor a crude businessman monopolizing more than his worth. Ruby wasn’t capable of such things, at least not consciously. 

A beat passed, and then- “I’m… Sorry.”

The room near enough swallowed Ruby’s cracked voice as she spoke, if not that then the pulsing against Cinder’s ear drums were what drown out the pitiful apology. What she did not expect was for the meek voice to continue-

“I was scared, and.. And I didn’t want to be alone but then I thought maybe I could-” Ruby hiccuped, and Cinder didn’t need to turn to know that tears swelled in her eyes.

“-Maybe I could be brave because you were there, I could help you… I thought I could be- be a Huntress, to slay monsters, and help people- like you do, like you did for me. I-I was so sure I could...”

She could have listened to the way Ruby’s broken voice stumbled over each word as if recounting a sonnet. Her fear was palpable, gnawing on Cinder’s urges to consume the girl beneath scalding hands, and she might have had her final words not struck a sobering chord. 

Cinder sagged heavily against the broken dresser, a tight, waning smile curling her lips.

“..Yes.” She said in quiet agreement. “I’m a Huntress.”

Cinder had heard it all before, quiet evenings alongside one another with Ruby fighting sleep to confess her hopes and dreams of being a hero, recounting stories from books she couldn’t quite remember melded with broken recounts of her time at Beacon. 

Ruby’s depiction of the night Cinder had overthrown the Vytal festival always differed while still remaining heavily edited to allow Cinder to fill the gaps. It was only she that knew Ruby’s dreams forever rested atop Beacon tower alongside that unwieldy weapon of hers, twisted into unidentifiable molten slag.

She remembered watching Ruby convulse when collapsing to her knees, that overgrown toothpick coiled in on itself and tossed aside, took pleasure in it.

A huntsman’s weapon acted as a conduit, an extension of their Aura not unlike another limb. To experience It’s destruction was akin to severing that limb, and remained something Cinder would never know; Her weapons shattered, and in moments she would re-form another.

Asset’s could be replaced, weapons reforged, Grimm spawned from abyssal pools of darkness again and again. But not Ruby.

This time, Cinder felt real warmth breathe along the diamond cut of her dress, washing against tattooed skin and reverberating a shudder along high shoulders. For a girl so slight Ruby’s heavy presence was unmistakable, filling Cinder’s senses with iron, thick and metallic on the back of her tongue. 

She craved undiluted sweet with soft, pliable skin burning beneath her lips. To press and pull until innocence bled from Ruby’s marrow. 

“You..keep getting hurt. It’s because of me, Isn’t it?”

When the cold of Ruby’s forehead pressed to her shoulder blades the Maiden inhaled sharply, regimentally straightening her spine. Ruby’s despair was unmistakable, floundering over words as if it were taking everything in her being to stop herself crumbling. 

“M-maybe… Maybe i’m not worth all the trouble. Maybe you shouldn’t-”

Cinder spun immediately, almost knocking the girl back in the process but where that failed to the territorial snarl gurgling at the back of her throat did not. 

“And where would you go? What would you do?” Rhetorical or not it was hard to ignore the derision smoking at the heart of a brewing wildfire, all composure she held in Ruby’s presence quickly spiralling.

“You can’t slay monsters.” Cinder prowled above her with feline grace, reaching with heat and claws to seize Ruby's chin between forefinger and thumb, tilting her up at a steep angle. “You can’t protect anyone. You can’t even protect yourself.” 

Edging her thumbnail into supple plump of Ruby’s bottom lip, Cinder pressed down simply to watch how it gave beneath the pressure before tracing a red line to the corner of her mouth.

The girl was shaking, lips wordlessly parting and closing.

“But I can.” The finality in Cinder’s words were breathed out over her trembling little Rose with a show of teeth, pulled from somewhere deep in her gut and surprising even herself.

Defeated, Ruby’s head dipped low. She didn’t disagree, but then again she never would.

Ardjent polish remained stripped back to gunmetal, raw and bared like live wires for Cinder to pluck and pull at her leisure. Yet for the first time Cinder couldn’t help finding her simple compliance inadequate; She didn’t want Ruby to just agree, she wanted her to believe it. 

Parting from her, the maiden’s fingertips prickled in the absence of warm skin.

Ruby’s blunt, gaping gaze stretched wide at the loss, swallowing the steady sigh exhaled over her, slow and deep, and when Cinder stepped away the bone deep-tremble Ruby exhibited was needy and starving.

A possessive purr crawled up from the deep cracks in her composure, tongue slipping along the dryness of her lips.

Ruby existed symbiotically, functioning only for her like a haphazard clockwork doll; To wind her with the wrong key would heed disastrous results. She wouldn’t survive Salem and the world she sought to construct, her brittle, simple soul would be consumed by her mistresses will like so many before her.

Salem would destroy her. 

“You’re my responsibility. Mine to protect.” Mine.

Cinder allowed no room for argument or opinion, and if possible Ruby’s eyes focused with enough wonder and fear that she thought of nothing but drinking deep of them, desire hot and clinging dangerously through the heat of her skin, sinking into her bones.

Intent dribbled into the Maiden’s heavy-lidded gaze, weighty gold burning down onto glazed silver. Faunus blood clung to the girl, sticky sweet copper layered atop something wicked lingering in the air, and one more step was all it took for Cinder to see all that they had done together flash through Ruby’s mind, scarlet flushing beneath where her still-loose blouse lay apart, creeping up into her cheeks to deliciously betray her fear.

Cinder knew she could smell it too. 

“Look at me, girl.” Disjointed and displaced, Ruby’s glassed gaze never seemed to focus beyond the haze of her broken consciousness, but Cinder wanted the girl to see her, to watch as nails alight with glass and fire dipped into the sternum of her ruined attire, the razors edge of her fingertips dragging, ripping the garment from chest to seam, destroyed, sacrificed, whatever it needed to be to watch Ruby’s empty daze become ripe with shock. 

She stuttered out an ineligible protest when the crimson melted from Cinder’s body to pool soundlessly around her heels, worn down to be shed like a second skin.

The barely-there candlelight glow captured perfectly each contort of Ruby’s shock, pleasing Cinder to watch as the girl neared her limit. 

“..I...I…”

“I see you, Ruby Rose. I see what keeps you awake at night, restless- ” Words coiled effortlessly around Cinder’s tongue and rolled over whatever sputter Ruby had conjured, leaving wide-eyed girl unable to look away as the fire at Cinder’s fingertips danced against what few buttons preserved her modesty, ripping. “-And desperate.”

The Maiden’s whisper barely grazed above the silence, as if it were possible for Ruby to understand that her desires were a shared torture. 

Too soon. It had always been too soon despite the ease it took for little Ruby to break. Somehow those eyes of hers resisted, an entity of their own and polished with just enough life that danger viced in on the Maiden’s instincts.

She allowed Roman the time he needed to file their edge to a blunt but patience was an unforgiving mistress with Cinder’s urges as deep-set as they were, aching as if reliving a time in her life starved of power.

But not this time. This power was hers. Ruby was hers. And Cinder would cut down all that challenged her primacy. 

“No more…” Throat parched, lips pressing to the clammy coolness of Ruby’s forehead, fingertips sparking with sharp warmth that had the girl shaking. “No more of these apologies you have been giving me, pitiful and spineless. Not after this..”

The final tear of Cinder's fingers was sudden, jolting a strangled sob from Ruby as she fought not raise her arms to conceal herself, her shirt instead tumbling away from her shoulders, unbidden. 

Creamy and exposed, her chest expanded and fell raggedly, stammering out what words she could muster up. 

“I-I didn’t m-mean to-”

“I almost lost you today.” 

Cinder’s voice was full of gravel, wanting to lower the gap between them and tear at Ruby’s full, trembling lips with teeth, to make her reel in pain as punishment. Yet in a way the older woman had forgotten possible there was a greater conviction plucking at her chest and flooding heat into her cheeks. 

She didn’t fight it, didn’t think twice when she bent to her knees, lowered completely with the edge of her breath whispering over pale skin.

The girl smelled divine, of heat and the sweetened scent of fresh roses plunged into bitter copper.

“I’ve almost lost you-” She repeated. “-again, and again, as if the gods themselves wish for nothing but to rob me.”

With claws eagerly hooking into her waistband, Ruby did not dare to stop Cinder from tugging her shorts over the curve of her backside, they too joining the growing pile on the floor. 

Her lips pressed forward, light brushes barely tasting the hot flush of Ruby’s abdomen, but enough that when Cinder’s tongue sought the sweet of her skin it pulled a shaky breath from the girl. She kissed a path to where the splay of ribs caged Ruby’s pounding heartbeat, open mouthed and hungry until she had her shaking just as hard as her pulse hammered. 

Desire had her gaze lidded-over amber fire when it climbed high, following stalactite nails grazing lines of red against the girls sides with their razor-like points forcing Ruby’s spine straight. Her sharp inhale caught hard between a soft groan and a quiet sob.

Each reaction, from the soft sounds bleeding between puffy, bitten lips to her full-bodied tremble quickly became more wonderful than the last, feeding the Maidens utterly insatiable desire.

“Never again.” There was no mistaking the possessive haught in the woman’s whisper. 

“C-..Cind- Ah!”

Fingers sunk between dark waves of hair when she treated each rosen peak of Ruby’s breasts to a flick of her tongue, then tentatively she took them into her mouth one by one, breathing heavily as she did so. 

The woman smiled, listening to Ruby’s soft mewls as she duelled with the very natures Cinder herself had instilled, deprivation and comfort a delicate symbiosis carved deep into the centres of her brain, knowing that touch was a reward never given so generously. 

Her fingers almost touched when hot hands caged around Ruby’s tight little waist, revelling in the way muscle and soft skin flexed in her grip. As her spine flexed and arched, the girl pressed herself into the proffered warmth of Cinder’s mouth, dizzy and clouded in bliss. 

Cinder smile grew at the caught sigh from above, her lips laid lightly down beneath the soft of Ruby’s belly until she paused to breathe hotly against her naval and jerk the girl from her reverie, chest fluttering, blushing and flustered. 

But Cinder ignored it. Rather, attempted to take just a moment of stillness to reel in her hunger, burying down the festering darkness and it’s penchant for Ruby’s fear. Down. 

She thought about how wonderful it would be to force it. 

The grip woven into her hair turned to fists and pulled a low growl from Cinder’s chest, but Ruby couldn’t possibly have grasped the magnitude of the offence. 

No. 

The maiden needed to remind herself that punishing the girl could catastrophically undo every effort she had amounted, and to toss her into a bottomless pit of despair would mean losing her entirely.

The taught line of her jaw relaxed apart before Ruby could question her troubled lapse, her shoulders dipping to press in deep between her thighs, spreading slicked heat wide over a languid stroke of her tongue. 

The girl was absolutely soaking, and the fragrance was amazing.

Ruby jerked hard, a shocked strangle rung out sweetly from above between heaving, uncontrollable gasps, one hand sunken tight to Cinder’s scalp as if clinging for life, while the other slapped haphazardly across her mouth. 

“I-I can’t brea- I can’t- G-gods… C-Cinder.”

Her chest stuttered, words hiccuped and damned behind an unsteady wall of moans, and Cinder missed none of it, amber gleaming bright in the dim light with muted hunger, chest rumbling with a low hum that had Ruby’s toes curling. 

“The gods have nothing to do with it, dear.” The wood felt abrasive when she slid her knees apart further, tongue wickedly pressing in deep to taste the dripping heat at Ruby’s core, barely pausing to voice her dissatisfaction. 

“Was it they who rescued you from your suffering?”

Seemingly unable to form words, the response came in the form of a spasm, breath quickening in shock. Ruby panted, struggling to find her voice as the woman beneath her all but dragged each unsteady moan from her lips.

“You are nothing but livestock in their games no less than the puppet, nor the invincible girl. Do you wish to suffer their fate too? ”

A viscous strand connected them as Cinder drew back, lips glistening and wet. She closed her eyes for a moment, savouring the taste with her tongue darting to catch every stray drop until she was satisfied. 

Shock had seized Ruby in absolute. Gone were the laborious breaths she struggled to control, stuck in her throat like caught thorns as the impact of Cinder’s words sunk deep. 

“..P-Penny, she-”

Names that dared sully the girl’s lips were overridden by the length of a single, dexterous finger finding the slick between her lower lips, spreading her wetness in slow, deliberate circles until the digit parted from her enough for Cinder to lower her lips to it, sucking. 

Ruby could only stare, stalled in conflict. Her trembling bottom lip closed and parted wordlessly, wide eyes ghostly and utterly petrified. 

The Maiden couldn’t help herself in making Ruby wait, watching her tremble and shift as she grew more desperate to know she hadn’t wronged the woman. Cinder let the possibility choke her for a moment longer before-

“...There is no greater pain than the knowledge that you would choose their fates over me, Ruby.”

Cinder always knew the right words to say, rapid-fire and automatically rolling from her tongue with ease but the odd sensation in her stomach was entirely foreign, doubting for a moment that she knew Ruby’s response even when the mewl ripping from her throat was one of a pained animal. 

“I-I… P-please Cinder, please don’t m-mean-”

Ruby was off her feet, pulled up as the much taller woman abruptly stood with her arms hooked around Ruby’s thighs. She was so hot, soaked and pressed tight against the skin of Cinder’s stomach when her thin legs instinctively wrapped to cross at the small of her back. 

By some miracle the Maiden stopped herself from slamming the girl to the bed when laying her against the cool sheets.

Ruby felt small and fragile beneath her, an injured sparrow imprisoned within a deadly cage of claws, threatening to be crushed. But instead Cinder’s grip on her shoulders was controlled pressure, and as she hovered centimetres from the girls lips she channelled all the will it took to reel her hunger back. 

“Then tell me… Tell me that you want me, girl.” She whispered, voice low and edging on abrasive. “Say it.”

Everything about her little Rose was a scandalous indulgence from each gasp escaping the petal-soft of her lips to the scent of roses clinging to the sweat of her temples, filling Cinder’s senses and making her inhale deep into Ruby’s hair.

“Say it, Ruby.” She repeated, stated urgency moving Cinder’s fingers to dip between their bodies until she felt her hot and slick, the girl yielding with a coarse cry. 

“Please p-please pl-” 

So sensitive, barely needing to try when granting Ruby the tip of her finger came more from pity than the cruel intention to watch the girl reel when she held the digit still. 

"I want- I-I want.. Y-.."

Cinder’s growl morphed into a wicked smile against Ruby's temple where it was unseen. the knuckle of one finger, two fingers, slamming down past tight, hot resistance, joined by a sob that uselessly escalated against muffling black walls

Mouth agape Ruby wordlessly arched against Cinders downward pressure, blunted nails scrambling against the woman's back with no thought for the wounds carved there. Hot burning shot down Cinder’s spine and somehow intensified her own pulsing need, but sating her own desires were a fleeting thought when the mere idea of Ruby dripping around her fingers fuelled her with vigour alone. 

The Maiden drew back to take in the sight of the trembling girl, already entirely debauched as her fingers pumped a slow, rhythmic pace. Strands of red stuck to the perspiration on Ruby’s forehead were moved out of the way before her palm moved to tenderly cup her blooming cheek. 

An ounce more pressure could have left the girl raw and beyond that, nails of razors could fuck to bleed, though Cinder wasn’t sure she wanted to take her in such a way when the haze of pleasure blanketing the girls eyes presented such a unique view. 

The nails against her back continued to sink hard, splitting the edges of barely-healed wounds and with it the Maidens eyes gleamed with enough clarity to evoke flames. Groaning, she stole Ruby’s lips in a searing kiss, bearing down and curling her fingertips against the resistant clench of Ruby’s walls. 

“Cinder I-I’m..I think I-I’m gonna die. "

Her eyes hardened, and a moment later she lifted Ruby's thigh around her waist to plunge deeper, her fear and pleasure swimming around Cinders senses in a dangerous and heady mixture. Ruby cried out into the kiss, body seizing and clinging around the woman with her ankles instinctively crossing at Cinder’s back. 

"Wonderful" She whispered back. Darkness sung inside her, starving to undo the girl at her already frayed seams. 

Ruby had lost all focus, panting as she weakly arched to meet each thrust. She didn't resist when Cinder circled an arm around her waist, pulling her from the bed to kneel across the woman's lap. 

Two fingers became three, arousal dripping from between Ruby's splayed legs to splash against Cinders thighs. The girl choked out an alarmed whine though too aroused to protest against the addition, instead her hips writhed impatiently against Cinder’s evenly set pace, too slow to toss her over the precipice but forceful enough to dangle her over it’s edge.

“Such a pretty little thing.” Cinder teased when her gaze was fixed and unwavering on Ruby’s, watching as sluggish focus sharpened when her thumb moved airily around the aching swell of her clitoris, spreading dripping wetness from the base of her fingers until hot pleasure shot up Ruby’s spine. 

Nothing could have curbed the way Cinder’s smile wickedly coiled to show teeth, relishing the open-mouthed expression on Ruby’s face and the way the sheen of sweat dusting her skin accentuated each rolling clench and relax of her muscles. The pace was driving her wild. 

“You are mine.” The backs of her nails trailed upward, creeping to catch the the sensitive peak of Ruby’s breast until reaching for the back of her neck. “All of you.” Cinder breathed out, arresting her spine and hair in a hard enough grip that panic seeped in to sober silver eyes darkened over with lust. She dragged the girl down hard to meet the punishing thrust of her fingers. 

Ruby bucked hard against the barely-there pressure teasing her swollen clit and wringing out pleasure with each stroke until soft mewls grew into uncontrolled panting. Her hands scrambled needily to find purchase anywhere until they settled on the arm holding her in tight bondage. 

In that moment the girl was more focused than Cinder could recall seeing before, silver gleaming bright with a dawning terror as if truly aware of all that was, and that had transpired before. 

And with a shrill cry it was gone. Eyes rolling back, Cinder felt Ruby clench urgently around her fingers, tight like a vice with her back arched, legs spread wide across her lap. Her nails sunk into Cinder’s arm and her lips parted breathlessly, melting into the throws of pure ecstasy where nothing else mattered. 

“Ruby-” Her name hissed between Cinder’s teeth with possession bordering on obsession when a bone-deep tremble referred through the younger girl, hips writhing and rolling to fervently push herself over each wet thrust. “- _Fuck._ ” 

With one last spasm she let go, knots of heated excitement coiling in Cinder’s chest as Ruby all but sobbed through the drawn-out aftershocks of her orgasm, coaxing every remaining drop of arousal from her until she’d spilled over, dripping rivulets down Cinder’s wrist.

Panting and exhausted, there was no strength left in Ruby’s shaking knees when she slumped forward, boneless and pulsing in tune with Cinder’s heartbeat and so the Maiden allowed it, fingers slipping from between aching folds to settle back against a nest of pillows on their bed, drawing the spent girl up against her chest.

They breathed together slowly, the steady rise and fall of Cinder’s chest pulling Ruby from uneven hitching into a more controlled rhythm. She felt each exhausted twitch and whimper atop her breast melt away into a void; all that was permitted to claim her little rose when crimson fire fell silent, sated. 

Cinder stared distantly at the empty roof, nails absentmindedly threading through Ruby’s dishevelled locks until the motion brought about an empty clarity that claimed the flames in her eyes. 

“They aren’t worthy of you, none of them-” She turned into the crown of Ruby’s hair, breathing roses and sweat mixed with the heady scent of arousal with a pleased hum. 

“-But I am. And I will keep what is mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The next chapter is right around the corner" She said 4 months ago. 
> 
> HOOOOOOO sorry
> 
> Raised the rating of the fic to E for...obvious reasons. Hope you enjoyed, please K&R if you liked it!


End file.
